Abel Zelenovic

Name: Abel Zelenovic

Gender: Male

Age: 18

Grade: 12

School: George Hunter High School

Hobbies and Interests: Baseball, baking, fitness, bass guitar, social media

Appearance: Abel is at an average height and stands just shy of 5'9". His weight of 177 lbs is comprised of noticeable muscle in his limbs and a rock-solid chest with broad shoulders. He carries himself in a relaxed and confident manner in most situations, and he tends to be expressive during conversation with plenty of facial reactions and hand gestures that fly around everywhere.

Abel's Slavic heritage shows in his facial features with his somewhat pale skin, round face, tall forehead, brown deep-set eyes, prominent straight nose, and thin lips. He clips his light brown hair down close to the skull but not enough to show the skin. His hairline has begun receding since he was 16 and has visibly started forming the M-shaped pattern associated with early male pattern baldness. He tries to shave his face a least every other day and hates having any stubble.

Abel isn't very knowledgeable about fashion, and he usually goes for safe options that are comfortable and easy to wear: t-shirts, hoodies, jeans, shorts, tennis shoes, and that's about it. On the day of the abduction Abel was wearing a sleeveless gray zip-up hoodie left unzipped, a white V-neck t-shirt, black athletic shorts, white ankle socks, and solid black tennis shoes.

Biography: Born on January 14th, 2000, Abel is the youngest child of Lukas and Karen Zelenovic, a fairly well-off couple who live in the Frazier's Glen subcommunity and are both natives of Chattanooga, TN. Abel has two older sisters who do not currently live at home: Amy, 21, is currently studying at Belmont University to become a registered nurse, and Natalie, 28, lives in Nashville with her own family. Most of the family's income comes from Lukas who works as an arson investigator for the Chattanooga police department; Karen had been a grocery store manager until quitting when Abel was 3 years old, but about three years ago she started a business selling baked goods online with modest success.

Abel has had a positive home life for as long as he can remember. Lukas runs the Zelenovic household like a tight ship and is the main disciplinarian due to his air force background, but Abel believes that his father is very fair and sees him as a strong role model. His relationship with his mother Karen is almost equally as strong due to her warm personality and encouraging words and is the main reason Abel became interested in baking. Abel's relationships with his sisters are more or less neutral besides the occasional bickering, although he has a stronger connection with Amy due to their proximity in age.

Even as a child, Abel was very outgoing and talkative. He would always try to strike up a conversation with strangers in line at the supermarket or restaurants, much to his parents' chagrin. He was very interested in sports from an early age when his father would take him to watch different games on the days Lukas had off. Abel especially grew a love for baseball after he was signed up for the local tee-ball league when he was 4, and he has enjoyed the sport ever since.

Abel became easily acclimated to school life upon starting elementary school. He was extroverted as always and tried to make friends and play with everyone he could. He got in trouble for talking out of turn a couple of times in class, but otherwise he was a well-behaved student and actively engaged in learning and activities with the other children. It was around this time when Abel's dedication to baseball really cemented when he joined Little League. Abel found a natural aptitude for the position of catcher due to the mental and physical pressures it required, and he loved it as it forced him to push himself through the mind games of a purely defensive position.

When Abel was 8, he developed a fear of large bodies of water after tripping and falling off a boat during a fishing trip with his family on the Tennessee River. Since then he has refused to go anywhere near rivers and lakes for fear of drowning. Recently he has been trying to conquer this fear and has worked himself up to standing in the shallow end of swimming pools, although if he goes anywhere past chest high he will get anxious and start to panic.

Abel became interested in baking just before middle school. As a young child he would sometimes watch his mother when she was preparing dinner for that night or baking stuff for bake sales, but he never directly asked her to teach him until he started watching shows with her on the Food Network. After watching an episode of Food Network Challenge involving Halloween inspired cakes, Abel mindlessly mentioned that he wanted to try making a cake like one of those someday; after hearing this, Karen enthusiastically snatched his arm and dragged him into the kitchen for his first official baking lesson that night. Ever since then Abel has expanded his baking skills to include cookies, pies, macaroons, macarons, and everything in between and has been a regular helper for his mother's business.

Middle school was an unremarkable time for the most part; Abel was still very extroverted but had better control over his tendency to speak out of turn during class. His friendship circle became more concentrated around other people involved with sports and the more popular crowd, but he continued to try and play nice with everyone even if they didn't fit into those categories. It was around this time when Abel became more interested in weight training and more organized exercise than what he was getting from just playing sports. With help from his father Abel started on an exercise and diet regime to promote a lifetime of fitness with the hopes of making it to 96 years old, for no reason other than it sounds like a good number.

Abel became interested in playing bass in 8th grade after being subjected to multiple sessions of Rock Band 3 with friends after school. He liked music enough and always found himself drawn to the rhythmic and moving bass lines to begin with, but he never considered seriously playing an instrument until he had that plastic controller in his hands. With money he had saved from Christmas and his 14th birthday, Abel bought an old electric bass and practice amp from the father of one of his friends and has loved it ever since. He practices at least several times a week but has no plans of pursuing playing as anything more than a hobby to do in his free time.

After getting his first smartphone for his 15th birthday, Abel began to get more absorbed in the world of social media. He runs an Instagram and Twitter where he mainly posts photos of his daily life with friends and food creations; sometimes he uploads bass covers of popular songs on his personal SoundCloud recorded from either his phone or laptop microphone, whichever is more convenient at the time. He doesn't have a very high following due in part to the low production values, but he enjoys blogging and posting content as more of a virtual diary than as a scheme to obtain validation through view counts.

Around George Hunter High School, Abel is fairly well-liked and maintains a positive reputation. He mainly sticks with the popular kids and their associates, but he tries his best to be pleasant to anyone who wants to talk with him and actively avoids gossiping about others. He has done well in his academic career, keeping a B average with a couple of A's and C's thrown around. He enjoys learning about history the most out of all subjects as he finds it interesting to learn about the mistakes humans have made in the past and the lessons learned from them. The only subject he particularly dislikes is English as he hates overanalyzing the reading material and tends to space out during classroom discussion as he has a hard time following along with the subjectivity it demands. He has been dating fellow classmate Amber Yates since the end of junior year, and things have been going pretty well. He is also captain of GHHS's baseball team.

After high school Abel plans on continuing his education at UT-Knoxville with a major in sports management and has a couple of scholarships to help offset the tuition costs. He hopes to continue playing baseball and dreams of ending up playing for the MLB, but if that doesn't turn out he isn't quite sure on a fallback besides finishing out his undergrad.

Advantages: Abel's physical strength and endurance are his greatest assets. His friendly personality may allow him to make allies easily, and his good reputation may help keep him from being a big target early on.

Disadvantages: Abel's impatience and tendency to talk over others may be a hindrance and may lead into making some bad decisions or getting on the nerves of other participants. His aquaphobia will be crippling if he must do any sort of swimming.

Designated Number: Male Student No. 013

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Designated Weapon: Maple wood baseball bat

Conclusion: Well, so long as B013 is Abel and willing- Huh?

...I've been informed that if I finish this sentence, I'll get punched. Bunch of spoilsports. - Josh Baines

'The above biography is as written by Jilly. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Jilly

Kills:  None

Killed By:  Paloma Salt

Collected Weapons: Maple wood baseball bat (assigned weapon, to Paloma Salt)

Allies: None

Enemies: Paloma Salt Mid-game Evaluation: Abel woke near Paloma Salt in the rice paddies area, and in a confusing series of events that may have involved Paloma trying to rob Abel, the two of them came to blows. In the ensuing fight Abel's bat ended up in Paloma's hands and she was the one who secured the final blow, leaving him mostly dead while she pilfered what was left of his supplies. He still clung to some form of life when she left, but was for all intents and purposes gone, and he silently sunk into the depths of the paddies.

Post-Game Evaluation: That has to be a record set for fastest death. At least you won something. - Josie Knight

Memorable Quotes: Abel never spoke on-screen during his time on the island.

Other/Trivia

 * Abel was both the first character to die and the first character to be killed by another student in V7. It was also the first time since V3 that the first death of a version was a murder rather than an accident or suicide.

Threads
Below are a list of threads containing Abel, in chronological order:

The Past: V7 Pregame: Prom: The Trip: V7:
 * Clothespins on the Fuel Line
 * OH! That's a Baseball!! 64
 * Make a New Cult Every Day
 * славянский души
 * Just Chill
 * Miss Bell's Home For Spiders
 * It's Raining Somewhere Else
 * Take The High Road
 * I've Got One Less Problem Without You
 * Dare You Enter My Magical Realm? (#SwiftBall)
 * Reflections (#Swiftball)
 * Dare You Enter My Magical Realm? (revisit) (#SwiftBall)
 * Party Freaks of Nature (#SwiftBall)
 * Dragon's Lair (#SwiftBall)
 * Heart's Dice
 * All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Hide, Except Here With You in My Ride, My 2-Door Dodge Ram Under the Chattanooga Night Sky
 * Assurance
 * Pool Puns-n-Harmony
 * Gristle and Mud

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Abel Zelenovic. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''
 * Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think Abel is the best first death/kill Main has seen by a pretty wide margin. This is impressive for a few reasons, not least of all that (depending on the metric) he's the character with the shortest in-game run in SOTF history. But he packs a whole lot into this brief appearance, and he makes it count, his spirit hanging over the rest of the version and serving as a key point in other characters' arcs and progressions.

To start with, I think it's important to note that most immediate deaths have been characters without much behind them—prior to V7, the only first deaths with more than one thread of Pregame in their pockets were Josh Goodman (at three, and a whole other can of worms), and David Russell (with six). Abel has eighteen. He was one of probably the five most-traveled kids in V7 Pregame, interacted with almost everyone, and had a distinct voice and character. He was funny and charming. If Pregame was a TV series, he'd be part of the crowd on the cover. This means that, when he is immediately and brutally killed, it's a whole different story from what we've seen before because he matters to a lot of people. He has a girlfriend and some teammates to mourn him (and seek to avenge him), and even those who aren't super close to him know who he is and often respect him.

Then, there's the exact way the death plays out. It's quick, just as quick as any past starting death, but in this case the speed and confusion is intentionally tapped into, and the unclear nature of what exactly transpired becomes a plot point later on, as Paloma offers a less-than-purely-reliable narrator and nobody else was around to see. Abel's body is the center of a number of goings-on, his reputation is posthumously impugned, and throughout we're brought again and again to his being clubbed to death with his own bat moments after waking up. It's brutal, not because it's super gory, but because it's so abrupt and unexpected.

Jilly did a great job with Abel, and there are lessons here for anyone trying to win the death race in the future. He was not phoned in. He was not an extra. His death was anything but low-effort or offhand; its impact was earned by months and months of Pregame work. And, because of that, Abel's absolutely a key (and excellent) part of V7, a legacy that will be remembered. - MurderWeasel